With This Kiss, I Pledge
by ariel2me
Summary: At her son's wedding to Cassana Estermont, Rhaelle Targaryen recalled her own wedding to Ormund Baratheon.


_**A/N: Canon-wise, it's not clear when Rhaelle Targaryen died. (My speculation is that she was one of the Targaryens who perished during the tragedy at Summerhall.)**_

_**But this fic is part of an AU series in which Rhaelle outlived both her husband and her son.**_

* * *

Here was her father's hand; hesitant, reaching out for Rhaelle, tenderly.

"Are you certain?" He whispered. "It is not too late."

"I am certain," she replied. And it _was_ too late, six years too late. _A promise is a promise_, she thought, and they knew what came of a king's broken promise: rivers of blood flowing through a broken realm.

She would not be the one to break yet another one of her father's promises.

Jaehaerys and Shaera, hands intertwined, refused to meet her gaze. Duncan and Jenny, hands asunder, refused to flinch under her withering gaze.

Her father walked her down the aisle as if delivering her to a den of lions.

_They are stags, Father, not lions, and you delivered me to them long ago. You, Duncan and Lord Lyonel between you. _

_I never blamed you, Father._

_I forgive you, Father._

She refused to think of Lyonel Baratheon, or of her eldest brother.

* * *

Here is _her_ father's hand; determined, reaching out for Cassana, impatiently.

_This_ father does not whisper any words of comfort in his daughter's ear. _This_ father does not seem to be troubled by a sudden fit of conscience, does not seem to harbor any remorse. _This_ father is openly rejoicing at his House's unexpected good fortune. _This_ father walks his daughter down the aisle as if marching her to the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

_This_ bride - she gazes at nothing and no one except her groom, unmindful of her father's hand leading her forward, delivering _herself_ to the den of stags with eyes wide open.

* * *

Here was her groom, waiting for Rhaelle with a grim look in his eyes he could not hide, and a curl to his mouth that was supposed to resemble a smile.

She remembered the laughing boy on whose back she used to ride; Queen Rhaenys, roaming free and unencumbered atop her dragon, shouting, _Faster!_ _Higher! _

She remembered the smiling youth who regaled her with tales of the storm kings of old, and – her favorite – the Storm Queen who reigned for far too short a time.

She remembered the distant stranger in Storm's End who avoided her gaze as he told her, "My father should not have assigned you to the kitchen. That is no fit place for a princess. I will speak to him."

"I am your father's cupbearer."

"You are still a princess of the realm, Your Grace," he had replied, bowing slightly, an act of courtesy that hurt her almost as much as Lord Lyonel's angry words did.

_Rhaelle! I am Rhaelle. You used to call me that._

He was always correct with her. Always courteous, always distant. Ser Ormund. Lord Ormund, now that his father was dead.

When his father died, she thought, _Perhaps_. _Perhaps we could be as we once were. _

But they could never be as they once were, as they oncecould have been, as they once might have been. Too many ghosts roaming, too many shadows lurking.

_I could have loved you_, she thought, closing her eyes, as she reached the lion's den.

* * *

Here is her son, waiting for his bride with a joyous glint in his eyes he failed to hide.

"An Estermont?!" Thundered Harbert, when Steffon first named his choice of bride.

"Choose a bride from the Stormlands, you said." To counter the malicious whispers that the new Lord of Storm's End was more dragon than stag, more a creature of the Crownlands than the Stormlands. "Marry the daughter of my bannerman, you said. That is what my father would have wanted, you told me, Uncle."

"A Tarth, or the daughter of one of the Marcher lords. That was what your lord father had in mind. Not an Estermont from Greenshit!"

"Greenstone, Uncle. And Lord Estermont is my loyal bannerman." Harbert saw only the frown, the flash of anger. Rhaelle saw the dread, the flash of uncertainty. _Is that truly what my father would have wanted?_

Harbert was relentless. "Be sensible, Steffon. How many men could Lord Estermont rally to your cause? Greenstone is _nothing_ compared to the strength of Stonehelm or Nightsong. This is not a fruitful alliance. The girl is comely enough, to be sure. But a lord does not wed merely to gaze at a pretty face."

"Am I a fool, Mother?" Her son whispered in the dark, as she woke, slowly, her hand instinctively reaching out to the other side of the bed, the side that had been empty this past half year. _She_ was the fool, still reaching out for the one who would never cease being gone.

"Is it a pretty face you want?" She asked her son.

"I want _her_. I want Cassana."

"Why?"

_Love_, Duncan had said. _Love_, Jaehaerys had said. _Love_, Shaera had said. _Love_, her siblings had all claimed as their reason for upending the world, for making liars and breakers of promises of their father and mother, of themselves - even Daeron, whose object of love was never named, never articulated.

"Why?" Rhaelle repeated. "Why_ this_ girl?"

"She knows what it is like. Cassana knows what it is like to pretend to be brave when you are afraid," said this young man who had cradled his father's head in his arms as the father lay dying. "She knows what it is like to put on a mask of certainty, when uncertainties are all you are certain of," said this young lord forced into his father's shoes all too soon.

"Tell your uncle that choosing a bride from an inconsequential House will prevent infighting between the more powerful Houses."

"Is that what my father would have wanted?"

"Your father would have wanted you to make up your own mind, Steffon."

"And you, Mother? What do you want?"

* * *

Here was her groom, draping the bridal cloak over her shoulders, carefully, tentatively. Then, while fastening the clasp, his hand accidentally grazed her throat. Flesh on flesh, skin on skin.

"With this kiss," they intoned, "I pledge my love."

_Love._ How could she believe in love, that force of destruction, of mayhem, after everything she had witnessed?

He bowed, slightly, to reach her lips for the kiss.

_We'll fly across the Sunset Sea_, he had told her, long ago, when she was a little girl riding on his back pretending that he was a dragon.

_Perhaps_, she thought, as their lips met. Perhaps the ghosts could be exorcised; perhaps the shadows could be lifted.

They would never be as they once were, but perhaps, perhaps they could still be more than what they are now.

* * *

Here is her son, draping the bridal cloak over Cassana's shoulders in one swift, confident motion.


End file.
